Westinghouse Electric Co. is scouting the former J&L Steel campus in Aliquippa as a potential home for a large manufacturing plant for its eVinci microreactors.
The Cranberry-based nuclear technology firm is in the process of licensing the eVinci design, which departs from current nuclear power plants in several key ways. It’s much smaller — Westinghouse advertises truck delivery — doesn’t require water or outside power, and comes pre-fueled to generate about five megawatts of power for eight years.
The company is aiming to have the first one up and running by the end of the decade, Leah Crider, Westinghouse’s vice president of commercial operations for eVinci, said at a recent datacenter and energy summit hosted by the Pittsburgh Technology Council.
“The good news about this is that we're looking to do what Henry Ford did for automobiles with microreactors,” she said. “So, entirely built in a factory, delivered to the sites where they're needed.
“We bring it, you use it, it runs for eight years before you have to touch it again, and then we'll take it away at the end.”
Earlier this month, Westinghouse’s Nader Mamish, vice president of global nuclear regulatory affairs, told the Nuclear Regulatory Commission at a hearing that the company is “looking at tens of microreactors.”
“Per year?” Commissioner Annie Caputo asked.
“Yes, it's not going to be single digits,” Mr. Mamish said. “We might start with one or two, but our clients have indicated that there will be double-digit numbers.”
But the production timeline isn’t yet clear.
The Post-Gazette has confirmed the nuclear company is choosing between the Beaver County site and another location out of state for the manufacturing facility. Westinghouse declined to comment on its search, saying in a statement that its “eVinci microreactor is a game-changing technology that is progressing at a rapid pace.”
“We are always evaluating opportunities to expand our capabilities to further accelerate the commercialization of the eVinci technology, however we do not have any announcements at this time.”
At the datacenter conference, Ms. Crider ticked off the company’s recent moves in the region.
“We've really been investing in helping Pennsylvania become and remain the epicenter of nuclear technology and specifically for microreactors,” she said last week.
In late 2023, Westinghouse opened its eVinci Technology Center, an 87,000-square-foot space in Etna formerly used by a pipe manufacturer. That’s where the company will be making the heat pipes for the eVinci reactor, which Jon Ball, president for eVinci Technologies once described as the “key guts” of the product. At the facility’s opening in October 2023, Mr. Ball estimated that Etna will be making enough heat pipes to supply half a dozen eVinci reactors a year by the end of the decade.
Last month, Penn State University launched the process of licensing and eventually deploying an eVinci reactor at its University Park campus.
The Saskatchewan Research Council is also in the midst of getting regulatory approvals to install an eVinci reactor on its campus.
‘Nuclear batteries’
Owned by two Canadian firms — Brookfield Asset Management and the nuclear fuel manufacturer Cameco — Westinghouse is known for its big, pressurized light water reactors, like the ones operating at the Beaver Valley Nuclear plant. These are designed to provide about 1,000 megawatts of electricity to the grid per unit, enough to supply millions of residential customers.
They are expensive and very long lead projects. Construction of two new AP1000s — Westinghouse’s latest generation of big pressurized water reactors — that went online at Plant Vogtle in Georgia in the past few years ran a decade behind schedule and billions over budget. As the first such reactors in the U.S., these were at the height of a cost curve that tends to fall with iteration, Westinghouse has said.
In Europe, a heightened focus on energy security that doesn’t rely on Russia has proved more fertile ground for large projects. Poland announced it will build three AP1000 plants, and Bulgaria has signed on for two; Westinghouse is in discussions with several other European countries.
The appetite for large reactors might even resurface in the U.S., where electric grids are girding for demand growth from datacenters and electrification, nuclear advocates predict.
Datacenters, in particular, are looking for constant and reliable power. But they also want it fast. That’s what brought Ms. Crider to the datacenter and energy summit last week.
“[It’s] a whole different picture of how to deliver power through microreactors,” she told an overflowing crowd at the Rivers Casino. “We're talking about 30 days from the day I bring you the reactor until it's putting electrons on your microgrid that's operating locally.”
Westinghouse has been pitching its reactors, the eVinci and the AP300, a scaled-down version of the AP1000, for off-grid applications.
“We’re looking at a network effect that can help enable resiliency and reliability,” Ms. Crider said. “Because as you add microreactors into your facility, you can take one offline and you’re only losing 5 megawatts.”
The company likes to refer to the eVinci as a kind of nuclear battery that can be plug and play with others.
First Published: March 21, 2025, 8:00 a.m.
Updated: March 21, 2025, 8:30 p.m.
